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NMA aims to 'buy what we need'

The overriding goal of the National Medical Assn. - especially since Medicare - has been the delivery of medical care to needy blacks. It has been a crusade of limited success.

Given its size (less than 5,000 physicians) and the size of the problem (millions of poor blacks), this result was predictable.

So when NMA meets in convention, as it did during the first week of August, it has three chief topics: The as-organization was founded 75 years before, a delegation of officials may have scored NMA's most important victory.

After a special White House conference - attended by President Nixon - the NMA delegation said it had reason to believe it accomplished much more than a token pledge of money.

The real accomplishment, as one of the White House conferees later said, was the replacement of the "traditional similation of more blacks into medicine; the delivery of medical care to blacks through community programs; and the acquisition of money to pay for such programs.

In the past, obtaining the money has been the major obstacle.

THIS YEAR, however, while its House of Delegates was meeting at Atlanta's posh Regency Hyatt House not far from the "little red church" where the HEW machinery" with a special NMA emissary, former president James M. Whittico, MD, to a key committee at the National Institutes of Health.
  
THIS COMMITTEE, the National Advisory Committee on Education for the Health Professions, reviews and approves all grants for medical education programs.

More important than obtaining $500,000 to open recruitment centers at Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., is the promise that they have gained an ally in new Secretary of HEW Elliot Richardson.

Richardson arranged the Presidential meeting after a talk with NMA officials.

Administration representatives at the White House conference included former HEW Secretary Robert Finch.

THE 7-MAN NMA delegation was headed by Immediate Past President Julius Hill, MD; President-elect and Chairman of the Board Emerson Walden, MD; and Secretary Andrew Thomas, MD.

NMA TOLD the Administration that it needs an immediate $2 million for black medical students this fall. "We're going back there next week to get $1 million of it," Dr. Hill told delegates.

There were indications too that NMA delegates were deciding that political

"We had good rapport with the President," Dr. Hill later told delegates.

"We were interested in how we could get things going (and) we did get some pretty definite commitments," he said.

One of those commitments is a special meeting with a key fiscal agent at HEW for the express purpose of "finding the money that we need," Dr Hill said. 
influence is much more effective than logic.

As one delegate, who suggested a non-partisan political action committee patterned after the American Medical Political Action Committee put it, it is time to "quit begging for what we need and buy it."

"WE'RE GOING to buy it through the American political system," he said His suggestion will be studied by a special committee which will report next year.

New President W.T. Armstrong, MD, Rocky Mount, N.C., intends to strengthen the organization administratively and financially.

Plagued by unforeseen financial and administrative difficulties that forced officers and staff to work out of their homes, past president Hill's year in office was characterized by continuous public appearances to keep the organization visible.

Dr. Armstrong, a 65-year-old general practitioner, says he will make membership and staff recruitment key goals.

THERE IS NO WAY to run a top-notch organization without paying for it and to this end NMA is going to be put on a "professional basis," he told delegates.

Officials acknowledge that there has been difficulty in collecting the annual $75 dues, as well as special assessments. News media were barred from a closed session of the House on the organization's new budget.

NMA must get a "clearer understanding" of its basic philosophy, Dr. Armstrong contends, and since NMA is making more Congressional appearances to testify on health legislation with AMA, one of his goals will be to strengthen its Committee on Health Legislation.

NMA's philosophy may have been expressed best by Dr. Hill in his farewell address when he said that during the past year the organization has leaned a little to the left and a little to the right in order to communicate with all elements.

[[image - black & white photograph of the "little red church]]
[[image - drawing of emblem of National Medical Association]]
[[image - black & white photograph of Dr. Julius Hill]]
[[caption]] Dr. Hill [[/caption]]

[[image - black & white photograph of Dr. James Whittico]]
[[caption]] Dr. Whittico [[/caption]]

[[image - black & white photograph of Elliot Richardson]]
[[caption]] Richardson [[/caption]]

[[image - black & white photograph of meeting of NMA representatives with President Nixon and Elliot Richardson]]

[[caption]] Black physicians met this month in Atlanta not far from the 'little red church' (above) where the National Medical Assn. was founded 75 years ago. Funding for medical programs, they were told by Julius Hill, MD, will be forthcoming because members met (top left) with President Nixon and Secretary of HEW Elliot Richardson. One result is appointment of James M. Whittico Jr., MD, to a key National Institutes of Health committee. [[/caption]]

[[image - black & white photograph of Dr. Leslie Alexander at a microphone]]
[[caption]] DR. LESLIE ALEXANDER, National Treasurer of NMA [[/caption]]